Introduction

In full honesty, coming directly out of my weekly translation class, sometimes it takes time for me to get into the right mindset to listen to the MIMUG (Monterey International Multilingual User Group) talks. Like revving up an engine, my brain usually has to go through a few false starts to switch gears (and languages) before fully being able to engage with the presenters’ speeches.

Walking into Irvine Auditorium on the evening of the 25th, I stumbled in with an almost-dead computer, a half-empty thermos of tea, and my metaphorical key ready at the ignition. Gabriel Fairman’s presentation—like all the ones before it—had sounded like a great topic in the event description, but at the time I had a feeling that my engine was just waiting to stall.

Not too far into Fairman’s speech, however, something he said caught my attention, and like magic my brain had snapped back into focus. Just shy of the ten minute mark, he asked those of us in attendance, “Who here has read ‘The Structures of Scientific Revolutions’ by Thomas Kuhn?” Instantly, a flood of memories from my last year of undergraduate hit me.

My major at Kenyon College was Sociology, and one of the most formative courses I took during that time was a class called “The Sociology of Knowledge.” The class sought to use theory as a basis to explain how structures of knowledge form and how we legitimize them. Reading Thomas Kuhn’s book as our first theoretical foundation had struck me as a bizarre choice at the time, since Kuhn was by all means a by-the-books scientist. To anyone listening to Fairman’s speech who knew Thomas Kuhn’s name, they must have felt a similar sense of confusion to my 21 year old self back in 2013. What kind of insight could a physicist possibly bring to a presentation on localization?

So How Does One Link Linguistics to Physics?

To answer this question, Fairman drew upon the idea of the paradigm as Kuhn defined the term. Within his own writing, Kuhn describes the process of scientific revolution as a cyclical movement through scientific phases. During the first stage of the process known as normal science, a set paradigm exists that most experimentation can structurally adhere to and feel comfortable within. A paradigmatic theory is one that best describes the current laws within a certain field or discipline but does not offer facts nor seek to declare itself as a set truth. If the paradigm is thought to present the overall outline of the current science, the research done within the normal scientific period fills in the blanks under the overarching idea provided by that outline.

The goal during these times is for the actors in that field (scientists, in Kuhn’s case) to answer the immediate conundrums that nothing but their own creativity and ingenuity can prevent them from solving.  Kuhn likens this to completing a jigsaw puzzle: it’s not enough to tell someone to just make a picture, because the pieces could simply be arranged in an abstract pattern to make any semblance of an image. The paradigm acts as the picture on the box that or the shapes of each piece that guide the scientist to connect them in a specific, ordered fashion.

The importance of these paradigms is, in a sense, their inherent inability to be absolute; a paradigm is only effective as long as it stands out as the best description of the current understanding of its field. A paradigm acts to lay down the rules of the field; however, if a person attempts to replicate that theory or act through its guidance and comes to a different conclusion than what the paradigm dictates, then suddenly they are forced to reevaluate their work. If repeated efforts to replicate the idea fail to fall in line with the current paradigm, then the emergent anomaly suddenly calls that paradigm into question.

The emergence and acceptance of an anomaly is the precursor to scientific discovery according to Kuhn. When the previous paradigm is called into question due to the science of the time progressing beyond what the old paradigm can explain, then suddenly the system falls into a state of unease.

As soon as a better, more accurate paradigm begins to emerge, the cycle progresses into a state that Kuhn refers to as “science in crisis.” This sudden call for a new understanding drives scientists of the time to loosen the rules of the standing paradigm and either instate the theory that proved the old paradigm to be less capable as the new paradigm (such as was the case with  the mathematicians Ptolemy and Copernicus) or search for a new paradigm through new, inventive research.

This redefining of the rules is what Kuhn calls scientific revolution. Revolution brings about new paradigms and then prompts the system to fall back into a state of normal science until the new paradigm is eventually called into question by newer, more advanced paradigms, thus completing the cyclical process of the scientific pursuit.

Shifting The Paradigm On Its Head

For Fairman, the field of Localization and Translation has, in a way, found itself in its own “science in crisis” phase, desperately in need of a revolution to reinvigorate the industry. For so long the field has remained in a stagnant state where the set rules of the paradigm have been accepted as unchanging truths because, for better or for worse, they’ve produced results that have kept the industry afloat, however tenuous at times. In Fairman’s words, if you adhere to a paradigm, it’s easy to find evidence to support that paradigm, just as it’s easy to ignore anything that does not. By limiting the industry to an outdated perspective, Fairman claims that we’ve prevented the industry from growing itself into a more effective industry that values its workers just as strongly as it values its clients.

But how does one change a paradigm that has dug its roots so deep into its foundations? Fairman says that once we recognize how limited our scope is, we can learn to challenge our predisposed perceptions of the industry and the assumptions we make. He’s currently trying to enact that kind of pivotal change within his own company, Bureau Works, in the hopes of causing a larger, industry-wide paradigm shift. By taking the initiative to challenge the paradigm and pay workers the amount that they are worth and not an arbitrary amount defined by an outdated system, he’s already seen positive changes in his workspace and in the quality of the work produced by his employees. It’s his hope that his company won’t be a one-off instance that falls to the wayside of history, but instead the catalyst needed to start the revolution that the industry desperately needs. I know that I, personally, will be rooting for his success from hereon out, for both my own sake as I head forward, as well as for the sake of the industry at large.

 

Citations:

Kuhn, Thomas. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.